Guests for the Night [v2] (7/10)

CD, November 1998, BBV Audios

Starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred

Written by Nigel Fairs.  Music by Harvey Summers.

Between The Other Side and Ghosts

Daniel:    Have you got any other house guests?

Cicely:    Oh no, it’s only the three of us at the moment: Me, Harold and Nanny. But she lives in the attic and so she doesn’t really count. So tell me: what brings you all out here in the middle of the night?

Daniel:    I’m looking for my sister, Tessa Armiston. Have you seen her?

Cicely:    I’m not sure. What does she look like?

Daniel:   Smaller than me; brown hair. She’s a student.

Cicely:    A student? I’m afraid we don’t get many students around here. What was she studying?

Daniel:    Temporal physics.

Cicely:    Oh really, how interesting.

Doctor: (pricking up) Indeed?

Cicely:     And were you her temporal phsyics teacher?

Doctor:   Me? Oh no, I’m a… an out of work interior decorator.

Cicely:     How jolly!  But I was sure I heard your little friend call you a Professor just now.

Ace:         Little f-

Doctor:    Oh that’s a pseudonym. I’ve been thrown out of so many high-class establishments I had to adopt one.

I could tell you about this production, but it’s better to quote part of an interview of Nigel Fairs from the AudioVisuals website in 2000.

Bill approached me for Guests for the Night, although he hadn’t even heard Pisces, in fact I only told him very recently that that was Pisces rewritten. Maybe it was John Ainsworth who approached me saying that Bill wanted scripts, and John said “Why not rewrite Guests for the Night?”, which was one of the Pisces episodes that John was in, because he said it was really very Doctor Who, so I did. It was lovely to work with Sylvester and Sophie, I was a very camp zombie, and the line about Mr. Crouch was my nod towards the Audio Visuals.

+++++

Ace and the Doctor arrive at Verspertine Lodge in the year 2036. Vespertine is a scientific name for “occurring in the evening”, which sets the scene for this story. The Doctor is looking for “the point of stillness” a technobabble term which just seems to mean a very calm place. He says that Harold Posidor will discover it in the future. Harold Posidor is a character taken from an Audio Visuals story which starred Nigel Fairs as the Doctor’s companion.

It’s gone midnight, Ace goes to enquire at the lodge while the Doctor is caught up in his musings. Suddenly the Doctor is halted by a gun-toting man called Daniel Armiston. Ace returns silently and disarms him. The Doctor was not concerned because what Daniel thought was a gun was a piece of a solar power system in the grounds. Daniel is here looking for his missing sister. Ace reports that the house is in ruins.

Nevertheless they make their way up to it, along the way they both feel an unaccountable feeling, as though a warm ghost has passed through them. Arriving at the lodge they are surprised to see the building is in fine shape and there are lights inside. Knocking on the door they’re greeted by a butler, Webster, who informs them that “the master is away” but still lets them in. He intones that the mistress Cicely will be down shortly to greet them. He shows them to the library. There’s a lovely moment here where the Doctor makes a snipe at a character once played by Nigel Fairs!

They quickly get shown into the dining room where, upon looking out of the window, the Doctor realises the stars are in the wrong place. They have travelled in time (backwards I believe). Cicely enters and after a very brief meal they are invited to stay the night. Harold, Cicely’s brother, joins them and she retires. The Doctor is, to Ace’s alarm, unusually tired. Harold retires for a private conversation with Cicely whereupon they divvy up the three strangers. Daniel wants “the boy” Daniel and it’s obvious what his intentions are.

Webster shows them to their rooms. Ace stays to chat with the Doctor in his room, it is clear that she doesn’t like Webster one bit. The Doctor goes out to examine the ornamental. Ace finds herself locked in.

Daniel wakes up to find Harold beside him. Cecily drugged the spinach, he tells him. Harold offers to lead Daniel to where Tessa is. He shows him to a room with pipes which he calls the waste disposal room. Tessa was there this morning, he relates. Harold has medical experiments to do, his father left him a sizeable task which he doesn’t feel like doing. He has his own projects.

Webster unlocks Ace. He won’t stop following her as she explores the house. She goes into Harold’s room, shutting Webster out. She finds listening devices, then triggers a booby trap which renders her unconscious. When she comes to, Ace has to fight robots that Harold built. Webster turns them off. Ace finds Harold’s bed, except it isn’t a bed. It’s a coffin.

In the garden the Doctor’s looking at the solar-powered equipment when Cecily arrives. She pours him a glass of wine, which he drinks. He starts to feel sleepy again. A clock strikes twelve. The Doctor suddenly becomes concerned for his friends’ safety. Touching Cicely he notes her skin is cold to the touch. Cicely laughs, saying they’re all dead.

Daniel can barely stay conscious. Harold shows him the remains of Tess and laughs. Carrying Daniel to a table he straps him down and is about to perform a ‘procedure’ when Cicely calls him. She has a body in the ornamental garden she wants moved. Webster brings a restrained Ace in. Harold kills Daniel before her eyes. Webster reminds Harold that time is running out, Harold is about to rush off to bed when Ace bolts from the room.

Cicely calls Nanny about the Doctor’s body. Nanny is a strange old woman who mutters to herself.

Ace finds the Doctor in the garden but she can’t wake him. Webster appears and there’s a gunshot.

It is morning. Ace wakes up with a tremendous headache. In order to escape from another of Harold’s robots she runs up a flight of stairs.

Nanny is about to cut up the Doctor for “meat” but is severely hampered by arthritis in her hands. The Doctor offers to help cure her, “I used to be a Doctor!”. But Nanny is too wily for such escape plans. Suddenly Ace bursts in and knocks Nanny out. Freeing the Doctor, he tells her that Harold, Cicely and Webster are all zombies. Nanny’s job is to break down the bodies of their victims, pouring the ‘soup’ down the pipes. But where do the pipes go? The Doctor realises that the ‘warm ghost’ feeling outside the house was them passing through the walls of a time bubble. A natural event, apparently, they are trapped in constant time, which is why it’s always night. “It’s not night though, it’s morning!” Ace tells him. He tells her his own revelation: Nanny is not dead, she’s warm to the touch. He cures her arthritis and they bind Nanny up in restraints.

Searching for the destination of the pipes, the Doctor, Nanny and Ace are halted on the landing by a robot. Ace rushes to Harold’s room to switch it off. The Doctor is taken by Nanny to a room with a nutrient vat bubbling away, the pipes leading to it. “Daddy” is inside in suspended animation. There’s some technobabble here about Daddy finding the ‘point of stillness’ and harnessing it to bring Webster, Harold and Cicely back on the point of death from a disease which almost killed all of them. It’s quite confusing, but the upshot is that they have to return to the vats to re-energise themselves, whenever morning is close. Nanny is revealed to be Daddy’s wife who refused to go into suspended animation and has therefore aged.

Daddy put himself in the vat with instructions for Harold to find the cure to the disease and then he’d be brought out of suspended animation. Morning ends; Harold and Cicely are with them, angry at Nanny for revealing the secret. Harold sets a robot on her for punishment but Nanny is killed. Arguing amongst themselves, Harold and Cicely don’t want to do the hard work of cutting up the bodies. The Doctor interrupts; he can cure their father and there’ll be no work to do at all. He can make nano-robots which will enter Daddy’s body and repair him. They both agree, but the Doctor insists Ace is released.

Cicely has Webster bring Ace in. Webster calls them both fools. If Daddy is released they will all be left to rot. He knows Daddy better than they; Daddy was a very selfish man who wouldn’t want them around as reminders of his dead kin. Harold sets a robot on Webster, silencing him forever. Ace leaps up angrily, does something (which isn’t terribly clear on audio) and Daddy’s vat is destroyed. Daddy had a button for a ‘Time Prohibitor’ in his hand and when the suspended animation was ended his hand slipped off, causing time to continue at last. Harold and Cecily died instantly.

The Doctor rounds angrily on Ace; she says that Daddy was evil and needed to be killed; he says she never met the man and is in the wrong. He quickly calms her down, but she is weary of the emotional turmoil of seeing so much death. They leave the house.

+++++

Sylvester McCoy! What more needs to be said? He’s excellent on audio and has never been less than excellent since!

Sophie Aldred is equally as impressive. This is the same Ace you got on TV from 1987-1989. There’s a subtle difference with the Big Finish Ace which is hard to put into words, but she’s far more adult in Big Finish. Here she’s still the troubled teen, all impulsive and action. She reacts rather than thinks. Just goes to show how much Big Finish have moved her on.

Catherine Debenham-Taylor is a bit of an enigma. She’s played in Panto with Toyah Wilcox, but is otherwise traceable as a stage actress in 1997/8. I can’t find her in anything after then. Nevertheless she’s very good in this. Much more restrained than her counterpart in the Cranfield Sound Productions version. Very believable as a spoilt upper class woman. I liked her, despite knowing what she was going to do!

Oliver Bradshaw gives a Webster who sounds incredibly like the butler from Count Duckula and that’s the image I had in my head throughout! He’s a little bit played-for-laughs, but that’s not out of place in this production.

Nigel Fairs is much better here than he was as Anton Savage. Here he’s believable as the psychotic homosexual killer. Why he doesn’t have his way with Daniel before killing him I don’t know. Ah well! In just five years Mr Fairs has really come on as an actor. Hard to believe it’s the same man really! He also re-wrote and directed this version of Guests for the Night. Very well done too.

Julia Akerman is a bit OTT as Nanny. It’s perhaps not meant to be treated as a serious story though, so maybe she’s right? I know this is a much more comic telling than the Cranfield version but I still think she’s pushed the comedy voice a bit too far. She is still listed as a voice actress today, but there’s very little else in the public domain for her.

Max Day as Daniel. This is another one of those, “I can’t find anything about him” people. He’s good in this, actually… rather good. Never seems to have done anything else as an actor. There’s a couple of people listed on imdb as part of a film crew but no way of discerning if either is him.

Now the music, by Harvey Summers is great! Before I listened to this audio I had a very brief correspondence with Nigel Fairs on Twitter and the first thing he said was that the music was “an absolute joy”. And so it is. There’s a grand, epic tune at the beginning and much jaunty music during it. Switching effortlessly to creepy and other moods Harvey Summers is just plain excellent here. He has gone on to much better things, but if he’s ever at a loose end I’d love him to do something for Big Finish. Really great!

+++++

So having listened to this and the previous version of this what do I think? It’s essentially a straight retelling of the Cranfield Productions version with Pisces, Alitza and Anton replaced by the Doctor, Ace and Daniel. Vena gets a more serious name, Cicely and both her and Harold switch from being outrageous American accents to being British.

Where this differs is that the moments which made me puzzled in the previous edition have been addressed in this one. It’s as if Nigel Fairs has answered all my criticisms retrospectively. There’s less craziness, less wacky zaniness and a more coherent story shines through. It’s clear now that Harold, Webster and Cicely are definitely NOT vampires. The Doctor describes them as Zombies but they really don’t eat anyone in this or make any suggestion that they would. They are just people who aren’t entirely dead yet so there’s no “why aren’t they dead?” problems. And Daddy’s power to hold back time is given a believable scientific reason.

Not only has this version tidied up the explanations, we also get a tighter script. Everything has a sense to it now, I think. I don’t want to listen to this story another time though to see if I missed anything!

Another huge improvement is that this is just so much funnier! At one point you hear Webster go “aaaargh!” and the sound of dinner crashing to the floor. Cicely simply remarks

Ah, I hear Webster’s on his way!

There’s also a great in-joke for anyone who’s heard the AudioVisuals where the Doctor rubbishes a book by Truman Crouch and says he should have stuck to making tea. If you know the AV productions this will make you grin. If not, it quickly passes you by. It also implies that Nicholas Briggs’s Doctor is the same person that Sylvester McCoy’s is.

To sum up, this is a vast improvement on the earlier version and redeems it for me. Well done Nigel Fairs!

Next time: I’m taking a break to work my way through the Audio Visuals back catalogue in preparation for the next BBV release, Cyber-Hunt. Enjoy the silence!

Guests for the Night [v1] (4/10)

Audiocassette, 1993, Cranfield Sound Productions

Starring Nigel Fairs, Linda Bartram, Lizi Hann

Written by Nigel Fairs. Music by Alistair Lock.

Non-canonical, but after The Huntress and before Lyr

Trailer.

“Where are you? I see nobody!”

“That is because there’s nobody to see, Pisces! Only the darkness.”

“That is not possible.”

“Who are you to say what is possible and what is not?”

“Without a form you cannot-”

“There is nothing I cannot do. Especially here, where it is always night.”

“Always?”

“My powers are strong here. Be aware.”

“You need a form, a host body. How else are we to fight?”

“There are other ways. The rules of the game are changing, Pisces, as we reach the end.”

“The end?”

“It’s nearer than you think. Be aware, Pisces.”

“I shall be prepared.”

“I too! In the meantime we play the game.”

“It is no game!”

“The rules are changing, Pisces! Darkness approaches!”

In 1984 a group of Doctor Who fans began producing their own audio adventures of Doctor Who, under the name of Audio Visuals. From the timing I’m going to assume it was a reaction to the new Doctor and his less than stellar first adventure. My thought is they saw it and thought “I don’t like this, let’s make our own”. They began to meet up and record stories together. In the pre-digital era everything was on cassette and multi-track equipment meant a reduction in quality with every dub. CDs were still very new and I don’t believe anyone but professionals had the equipment to burn CDs even if the costs weren’t prohibitive. Also, computers were still in their infancy; desktop publishing was not available to all so the packaging of the cassettes was photocopied artwork onto coloured paper. It was the best they could do back then.

By the time of the second story, Nicholas Briggs had stepped into the role of the Doctor and would remain in the part until 1999 when Big Finish Productions (with a much better budget and equipment) was able to cast the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors in the part. The chronology of it goes something like this:

Bill Baggs, Gary Russell and Nicholas Briggs were Audio Visuals. Eventually Bill Baggs went his own way with BBV; Russell and Briggs went to form Big Finish. Nigel Fairs was Nick Briggs’s second companion and had also started writing. When he was written out of the Audio Visuals he started a third arm as Cranfield Sound Productions. The four seemed to have parted amicably as there is some crossover of the roles in each of the three arms. Nick Briggs worked with Baggs, Nigel Fairs worked with Baggs and now works with Big Finish.

There’s a very good interview of Nigel Fairs on the AudioVisuals tribute site, here which will fill in all the details.

Cranfield Sound Productions were recording a series of linked adventures called Pisces. Each story was involved with a sign of the zodiac and there were twelve episodes to be recorded. There are five in existence, but the Pisces website indicates that the sixth story was recorded.

The first story is about a man who’s training as a professional swimmer (Aquarius, see?) when he meets a mysterious woman, Pisces. It turns out that this man, Anton Savage, has a power. He can roll back time. Pisces is some sort of mystical being who has come to recruit him in a fight against a villainous power, Darkness (Nicholas Briggs). Her power is that of healing. In the third story they meet another woman with powers, Alitza. She is a savage very much in the mould of Leela. Her power seems to be over the elements, both creating and dispelling a violent storm in The Huntress (Sagittarius, you see?).

They’re in a perpetual battle against a non-corporeal force called Darkness. It just cackles a lot and occasionally possesses people.

The next story is Guests for the Night, which will later be remade by BBV with Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred replacing Pisces, Anton and Alitza. In order to compare the two productions I have listened to the CSP version and here are my thoughts.

+++++

In a remote house, after midnight, a Master Harold is playing a cruel practical joke on his butler, Webster, when his sister Vena enters to tell him that three people are approaching. These three people are Anton Savage, Pisces and Alitza. Alitza the huntress has been checking the grounds out and reports back that the place is full of booby traps, setting the scene that this is a dangerous place.

Vena commands the now-released Webster to get out the best silverware. Their guests are going to be spoiled. Webster lets in the three strangers who are immediately taken to the dining room for a meal. Their hosts are not there. Anton describes the place as being “like Frankenstein’s castle”. In the hallway a monstrous hound has killed the pet cat and Alitza shares the kill with the dog, taking the legs for herself, which she begins to eat. Raw.

Vena appears, at first horrified but very quickly she gives up the pretence of caring. She tells them that her father is away on business, but they will meet her brother in due course. Officially recognised as guests they are then shown to bedrooms. Alitza, unhappy with the knife she has taken from the dining room heads to the kitchen to get a better one. Pisces has a room of her own, leaving Vena alone with Anton. She flirts outrageously and then gives Anton a drink while promising to slip into something more comfortable.

Pisces has been taunted by the voice of Darkness. She goes to check on Anton and finds him drugged and alone. She wakes him, only to hear the clock strike twelve. Midnight. They decide to find Alitza.

In the kitchen Alitza is doing battle with a robot that has attacked her. There are a series of robots, all created by Harold. As she defeats one he wheels in another, more advanced model for her to fight. His robots are not enough for him, he wants a cyborgs and decides Alitza will be a good survivor of the organic components.

On the stairs Anton falls through a trap door into a room off the kitchen. Webster intercepts Pisces and takes her to Vena.

Running from Harold’s needle, Alitza locks herself in a dark room which Anton fell into, moments before. There are many animal bodies, all drained of blood. Alitza’s keen eyesight finds another exit. In the next room they find three empty coffins. A robot breaks in and Alitza is paralysed by an injection. Anton is taken away by Webster, wondering where the pipes in the cellar go.

Vena is not happy with Pisces’s snooping but offers to give her a tour in the morning. Webster brings Pisces a drink. Shortly after drinking she realises she has been drugged. The clock strikes midnight. Before passing out Pisces touches Vena’s skin. It is cold to the touch, Vena cackles that she is dead like everyone else in the house. Vena sends Pisces’s body up to her ‘granny’ in the attic.

Harold has Alitza strapped to a table and gagged. He boasts that he cuts people up at night for experiments. Webster intervenes, surly and angry. Harold and Vena are wasting time, he says he will tell Harold’s father so Harold reluctantly leaves. Vena is tormenting Anton when Webster interrupts her too. Informing her that it is ten to the hour, she leaves hurriedly. Webster sends Anton and Alitza up to the attic for Granny.

In the attic Granny is ready to cut up the still alive bodies for meat when Pisces persuades her that she should be released. Granny has painful arthritis which Pisces heals. Suddenly it’s morning. Pisces realises that Darkness will be weak at this hour. She finds that Granny is warm to the touch, the only living person in the house. She makes Granny show her where the pipes lead. Granny is scared of Harold and Vena. She’s told she is safe while it’s morning, so complies.

Granny takes her to a body in a vat, in suspended animation. It is “Daddy”, Vena and Harold’s father. Vena, Harold, Webster, Granny and Daddy were all infected by a disease. Vena, Harold and Webster died and Daddy put himself in suspended animation while his undead children went on with their undead existences. Daddy, even in suspended animation, has the power to hold back time, creating nights that go on endlessly. His power slips sometimes, causing the occasional morning, when Granny (his wife) ages. Darkness has tried to possess Granny, but she has managed to resist him, to his fury.

Alitza and Anton are free. The hound, now possessed by Darkness, leads them to Pisces.

Suddenly it’s midnight again. Harold and Vena appear. Harold is angry with Granny and sets his robot on her to punish her but accidentally kills her. Harold and Vena fight, not wanting to do the hard work that Granny did. Pisces tells them she can heal their father and they will not have any more work to do. Webster calls them idiots. Their father was a tyrant who will have them buried as soon ass he returns. Harold has the robot kill Webster. Pisces heals Daddy and while distracted Alitza kills Harold and Vena, to Pisces’s ire.

Darkness reveals that Daddy has been in his thrall all along and spirits him away. Pisces, Anton and Alitza have more battles to fight.

+++++

A complaint I have about the Audio Visuals is that pseudonyms abound like mad. I don’t know if this has spread to the Cranfield players so I can’t be certain that everyone listed is under their real names.

Pisces, played by Linda Bartram has gone on to be involved in BBV’s Faction Paradox productions and appeared in one Big Finish play.

Anton Savage is played by Nigel Fairs, the production’s author. He has previously been Truman Crouch, the Doctor’s assistant in the Audio Visuals series. He is still an actor and writes regularly for Big Finish.

Lizi Hann (Alitza) is apparently still an actress though there’s virtually nothing on the internet about her. She wrote a book in 1998 about Dementia.

Penny Horder played Vena. I can find nothing about her, but she played the part with such an outrrrrrageous Southern Belle accent that she could easily be Lizi Hann or Linda Bartram doubling up.

Harry was played by Michael Adams, such a common name that it’s not even worth researching.

Webster is John Ainsworth, mentioned in several previous entries of this blog!

Darkness is Nick Briggs, of whom little needs to be said. A stalwart of audio productions since 1985 and the head honcho at Big Finish Productions.

Each of the actors here are very early in their careers and the performances reflect that. They are awkward but doing their best. It’s an amateur production and you should suspend your willing disbelief when listening to any of these or any AudioVisual productions. Just listen to the words and try to imagine they’re good actors.

The same is true of the music. Alastair Lock has provided great music in some things… but not this.

There’s also a feature about Lizi Hann on the cassette which just shows what a bubbly funny person she is!

+++++

There’s more than a whiff of Paradise Towers here. Everyone’s a bit over the top but it’s such a wild plot that I can forgive it. It’s a story of undead people performing medical experiments in order to cure a time-freezing semi-unconcious man in a vat. You can’t really expect it to be terribly serious! It’s not clear why Harold, Vena and Webster aren’t dead nor why Darkness has an interest in the place.

It’s not clear why Pisces and Co have gone there, either. There’s references to vampires and coffins but the plot doesn’t actually seem to imply that at all. Harold and Vena just are undead, they don’t seem to ingest any of the human flesh or blood. Harold seems to be a medical genius, carrying on his father experiments but there’s no indication of scientific equipment. He makes robots but seemingly for no purpose other than to fight each other.

Essentially… it’s a mess. It’s all about the atmosphere and the wacky machinations of the family. There’s very little to get your teeth into, it’s just a runaround. Lots of independent scenes and not much logic. A bit of an 80s schlocky low-budget video nasty. You shouldn’t think about it as much as I have.

If you can get over the performances I’d say it’s a fun romp, but there’s very little value here. The ending is sudden and an anti-climax, if listened to as a stand-alone drama, but as part of a twelve part what-happens-next? serial it’s an acceptable ending. If you’ve ever seen Into the Labyrinth it’s just like that. A time-filler, leading you on to the next story.

The Other Side (8/10)

CD, September 1998, BBV Audios

Starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred

Written by Mark Duncan. Music by Harvey Summers.

Between The Left Hand of Darkness and Guests for the Night

 

“What was that? The Professor! Looking down at me! Talking to me!”

“It’s a delusion.”

“It didn’t feel like it. It felt real.”

“Cos it was real. Your final moment, the last memory and the more you try desperately clinging to an illusion of life the worse it becomes. You will find yourself reliving your death over and over again cos it’s the only moment of that life you have left now. Do you really want Death as your only reality, forever?”

“If you think I’m just going to roll over and give up cos you say so, you’ve got another think coming! If you can find the Professor so can I!”

“You always did things your own way. But ask yourself: are you really doing it for you or just cos you feel obligauted to do it for the Professor? Think about it and remember what I’ve said. The more you go back, the longer you stay, the greater the pain.”

Another one by the enigma that is Mark Duncan. If you find out anything about him please let me know! Like the story previous, this one has minimal Sylvester McCoy in it, presumably so that they could record his lines all in one day for the two stories. It’s another ‘two hander’ with the majority of it being dialogue between Ace and her Nan.

+++++

The Doctor has successfully got Ace home. They roam the locality of what is presumably Perivale, even visiting what appears to be the same community centre seen in Survival. Like Survival there’s no-one around. Until Ace spots her friend Mischa, runs to catch up with her… and gets knocked down by a car. She’s quickly back up on her feet but The Doctor and the car driver are unaware of her presence. They’re more concerned with the body of the young woman on the ground. Ace’s body.

Ace whirls round to see her Nan. Her Nan who died ten years ago. Her Nan who tells her she too is dead.

Informed that her essence has left her body, never to return, Ace is in denial. Ace’s Nan tells her she’s there to help her with the transition to the other side.

An ambulance arrives and the ambulanceman declares Ace dead. The Doctor is, of course, upset. Her body is loaded into the ambulance and the Doctor accompanies her on her final journey, leaving the spirit/ghost/soul behind at the spot, aghast. Still unbelieving that her Nan is really her Nan (she even speculates it’s an alien in disguise!) her Nan recounts her own death to her. How Ace was the one who found her body. Nan is friendly and consoling. Ace is as warm and approachable as she was with Dorsai, which is to say not at all.

Her Nan assures her that sudden death can make a spirit want to hold on to the real world instead of moving on. She should accept her death, her Nan will ease her on to the next place. Ace is resistant. Nan makes disparaging remarks about Ace wanting a father figure, presumably to cause Ace to release her hope that the Doctor will yet do something for her. Nan remembers how Ace dealt with her death. She witnessed Ace bottling up her grief and turning to trouble. She recalls how Ace’s mother (no longer with Ace’s father) turned to the bottle. Ace still resists.

Ace’s ghost and her Nan whiz forward to the hospital where they witness a tearful Doctor. He is taken to the chapel of rest where he says goodbye to her body. Nan remarks that he’ already beginning to let go, as he has had to do so many times before.

They whiz on to Ace’s funeral. The Doctor did not attend, he’s already out there, getting on with his life. Nan continues to press Ace to resign herself to the facts. Ace believes she hears the Doctor calling to her. She praises all he had done for her, treating her like a worthy individual when no-one else did.

Whizzing on, it’s six months later and the Doctor has a new travelling companion, Nadia. Ace is instantly jealous, annoyed that Nadia doesn’t look out for the Doctor how she did. Whizzing on to the end of a successful Doctor and Nadia adventure, Ace is crushed to see the Doctor doesn’t need her. This causes her to break down and accept her fate.

In the ambulance, the Doctor is disturbed from his reveries by the ambulanceman seeing a glow on Ace’s face.

Ace recounts to her Nan the loneliness of Dorsai. A machine with a need for others. She doesn’t want half a life any more than he did.

The Doctor tells the ambulanceman that Ace’s mind has been infiltrated by a malevolent alien entity. He attempts to communicate with her telepathically.

Ace’s Nan has Ace ready to cross into ‘the light’. She’s about to step through when suddenly she hears the Doctor urging her to fight. Realising that her Nan is not her Nan, Ace refuses to cross. The alien says the vortex needs her. Ace calls it a parasite and that she’ll never do what it wants. She surmises that the creature is trapped too, between Life and Death. It wants to take her body and escape. The alien tells her it can destroy her mind and thus her body. The alien hurts Ace but she will not give in. So it conjures up her dark side, a second Ace who is not afraid of her cruel impulses, thrives on them. The bad Ace will bond with the alien and live out a hedonistic life without the weaknesses of compassion and trust that the good side of Ace possesses.

Ace reminds the bad Ace of Dorsai’s loneliness. His “half a life” was not enough and it wouldn’t be for her either. The bad Ace realises Ace is correct and they unite against it, forcing it to flee her body. Where does it go? Who knows…

Suddenly, to the Doctor’s happiness, Ace comes round in the back of the ambulance, unscathed and a lot happier with who she is. Ace checks herself out of the ambulance and they leave, in high spirits.

+++++

Another very small cast here. Barbara Shelley is truly excellent here. A seasoned actress, having worked from the fifties as one of Hammer‘s leading stars in multiple films. She was also in a televised Doctor Who serial, Planet of Fire and the BBV video More Than a Messiah. It’s a pleasant change to get a mature actress playing an elderly lady when so far in such ‘fan productions’ it’s usually been much younger actors and actresses putting on an old person voice. It really helps you to believe that this is Ace’s grandmother. I would remind you that her Nan would of course be the young woman with the baby from The Curse of Fenric.

Sophie Aldred is at her best in this story, really inhabiting Ace, finally given some meaty acting to do. According to the liner notes, at the most emotional moments when Ace was crying, Sophie was so caught up in the emotion that she cried real tears.

Sylvester is of course his usual majestic, commanding Doctor. He doesn’t have much to do, but he emotes sadness and grief so effectively you’ll want to give him a hug. An underestimated actor.

As the Doctor’s ‘new companion’ Nadia, Jane Burke is magnificent. She’s a self-obsessed dyed blonde follower of fashion. The sort of person who really would enjoy Big Brother and celebrity magazines in this day. It’s a bit of a shame she was a fiction dreamed up by the alien as she was a refreshing change from the usual companion! I would have liked to heard her in more audios.

Jack Galagher is the Paramedic and performs adequately though not a natural actor I’d say, he seemed nervous in the part. He’s gone on to appear in several Big Finish plays so I assume he’s got better over time!

In small roles there’s the ever-dependable Alistair Lock and John Ainsworth, regular fixtures in Doctor Who audios to this day, though mainly behind the microphones now.

Since the last review I’d managed to ascertain that Harvey Summers is this Harvey Summers, a successful composer, musician and record producer! Unfortunately there’s not much music in this to recommend, it’s mainly the post production and atmosphere he provides here. What little music is in this, and there’s barely any, is effective. Mostly what you notice about his work here is the ambience of each room, location… and of course Limbo, where Ace spends most of the story.

A new edition to the end of this CD is a round table of Sophie, Bill Baggs, Alistair Lock and John Ainsworth. Bill Baggs makes it clear this is a continuation of the AudioVisuals’s “On Tape” interviews which came after the stories on those cassettes. It’s a fascinating insight to what it meant to each of them back then, in the pre-Big Finish days.

+++++

Another psychological study of Ace here, once more putting her through the emotional wringer. Like the previous story she is separated from the Doctor and slowly broken down, made to believe things are hopeless and give up. Although this time she has more to lose than just living an isolated life, this time she will stop living completely.

It’s an examination of what makes Ace tick. How did she come to be the troubled teenager we all know so well. Why did her mother become an alcoholic? How did she react to the death of the relation she was closest to? How does she think the Doctor sees her? Why does she have such faith in the Doctor and how will she feel when he leaves her behind?

All told, this is a great insight into Ace’s feelings and reasons for the way she behaves. It’s gruelling though, stripping down her artifices to see the person behind. You may want something warm and fuzzy to uplift you after hearing this. A compelling story and a high point of the BBV audios.

The Left Hand of Darkness (8/10)

CD, July 1998, BBV Audios

Starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred

Written by Mark Duncan. Music by Harvey Summers.

Non-canonical, but after Prosperity Island and before The Other Side

“He isn’t coming. [heavy sigh] Never thought I’d hear myself say that one. I have to face facts, don’t I? I’ve been a complete bitch. You tried to help me and what did I do? Wrecked everything. Smashed your plates, stole from you (which I don’t do) and hit you over the head. About the only thing I didn’t do was spit at you.”

“You did that last night.”

“I’m sorry. Delayed shock, I guess. And the rest. I owe you an apology. Well a lot really. I would’ve died out there if you hadn’t… Thank you. So… what do I do now?”

“Let me look at your eyes.”

“How do they look?”

“Like the rest of you: beautiful.”

“[Laughs] Flatterer!”

Bit of a mystery here. All I know about Mark Duncan is that he wrote this and three other stories for BBV. This story does lead directly into the next one, also written by Mark Duncan and therefore features some foreshadowing carefully dropped in about Ace’s parents. There’s an entry on TARDIS Wikia which appears to have been written by the author himself or someone who knows him.

+++++

A man called Dorsai is keeping a log. He talks of the apes outside the protective walls; he talks of a recent spaceship crash on the planet where he is and the survivor he saved from the wreckage.

Ace wakes up to find her face covered with a healing mask. She cannot see. When the mask is removed she still cannot see. The man informs her she suffered 20% burns from the crash and that her eyes are being healed. For the time being she is required to leave the dressing on her eyes and is effectively blind. She asks about the professor, but is told there was only one survivor. The other bodies are not human, the Professor was not among them.

Asked of her last memory, Ace explains she was on Markab IV at a marketplace with the Professor. He was trying to buy some crystals when someone rendered her unconscious from behind. The man, Dorsai, tells her she is nowhere near Markab IV, she is in a small house on a remote planet, outside of transmitter range of the space lanes. No-one will be able to find her, she is alone with him.

As Dorsai goes to lay flowers on the graves of the two people he arrived there with, Ace explores the house. There is a computer which can answer basic questions and guides her, vocally, to where the walls and doors are. She is intercepted by Dorsai just before she blunders into the electro-magnetic barrier which keeps the house safe from the dominant species of the planet, the aggressive, dangerous two-metre tall apes. The barrier is strong enough to harm or perhaps even kill her. Ace is very hostile to Dorsai, suspecting him of kidnapping her, holding her captive and other dubious possibilities.

Enough time has passed now for Dorsai to be able to remove Ace’s dressings. As her eyes are uncovered she discovers that… she cannot see. She is actually blind.

By the fifth day with Dorsai, Ace is still not warming to the man she has to cohabit with. She refuses to eat or let him examine her eyes. She doubts his every motive and is not shy of expressing it. Dorsai has been nothing but polite and kind all along and will continue to be so throughout this audio. On being told the computer can make her some replacement clothes she requests that the fatigues she will be issued with have “ACE” on the back.

In an effort to stimulate her memory, Dorsai escorts her to the crash site. Perhaps the spaceship will bring back memories. It does, she remembers being caged like an animal in the zoo, alongside other specimens. She realises she misses the Doctor and imagines hearing his voice calling for her.

Dorsai is aware that the apes, which he calls Tribers, are closing in on their position and they hurry back to the house. Ace’s hostility to Dorsai reduces. A little. He plays the piano, beautifully. He explains that it was a scientific expedition, that the house was constructed from the spaceship parts, even the piano was made from an instrument panel. The two people with him died of natural causes and now he continues the work alone.

Day 7 and Dorsai describes his relationship with his two dead colleagues. They were like parents to him. Asking about her parents, she confesses to hating her alcoholic mother. She had been brought up by her Nan. Suddenly the Tribers attack the barrier. Dorsai explains they periodically attack it, testing for weaknesses, but they will give up eventually. The computer intones that the barrier will only sustain the attack for two hours. The Tribers give up before that time.

Alone in a secure part of the house, Dorsai is performing a “procedure” on a live female Triber. It appears to be nothing more than vivisection.

Later, Dorsai gives Ace a Sensory Stick, a sort of walking stick which can beep as she comes near to objects and walls. With this Ace navigates her way around the house. Later, when Dorsai is out checking his Triber traps Ace interrogates the house computer. It is frustratingly basic, many of the answers she requires are deemed above her security level. Ace secretly gets the computer to make her an interactive map which can speak the distances and locations of the house from the crashed spaceship. She intends to get there by herself.

Dorsai and Ace have a frank discussion where he appears to be psychoanalysing her. He points out she hasn’t seen her friends in years, hates her parents and dotes on the Professor, whom she knows nothing about. He is extremely accurate. She reiterates her faith in the Professor, though. She still believes that he will come and save her.

Ace manages to knock out Dorsai and makes for the spaceship. On the way she walks straight into a bog which is slowly sucking her in. Fortunately Dorsai has recovered and arrives to save her. But then they are attacked by Tribers. There is some scuffling which isn’t clear on audio, but it transpires that Dorsai manages to get her back to the safety of the house and the electro-magnetic barrier.

Dorsai doesn’t understand Ace’s behaviour. Why won’t she trust him? She says she finds him “creepy” and stifling. It is analogous to someone with a crush. She goes to bed.

Ace wakes up to the Professor’s face. “You’re not Ace,” he tells her. He is cruel, taunting her mercilessly, and then… she wakes up. It was just a nightmare. Ace finally breaks down. She accepts that he isn’t coming to rescue her. She apologises to Dorsai, hoping to make the best of it.

Later, Ace jabs some numbers into a door keypad. It transpires she has been systematically trying different codes over the days and finally hits the right one. She enters Dorsai’s private section of the house and listens to his logs. She finds out that he has not been telling her the whole truth. Ripping off the dressings on her eyes she finds she can see. Confronting Dorsai her eyes now make it obvious to her that he is an android. She tells him she’s found her way into his secret room and found the results of his experiment. He admits to gathering data on the apes, carrying on his former colleagues’ experiments. Angrily, Ace tells him to stop his experiments, to release the Tribers. No-one will ever see the results of his research. He has been doing it out of habit.

Urged by her he goes out and unsets the traps. Suddenly the Doctor appears, he’s managed to track her down! Ace says the three of them can now leave together. The Doctor agrees but Dorsai doesn’t. He is a unique individual and he knows he will be disassembled for examination if he is returned to society. Ace tries to make him go but he explains he has free will and will not go. The Doctor has researched the spaceship Dorsai arrived on and points out to Ace that Dorsai has been alone on Markab IV for over a hundred years.

Dorsai says he needs an active mind like Ace’s to keep him stimulated. When she leaves he will not be able to cope, now he has no purpose. Before Ace can stop him he deliberately walks into the electro-magnetic barrier, damaging himself fatally. His neural net is depolarising, not even the Doctor can save him. He dies, leaving a distraught Ace. She buries him next to his colleagues and leaves a message for anyone who might find him, praising him.

She powers down the house computer and turns to the Doctor, weary and upset.

Take me home.

+++++

This is usually where I’d tell you all about the guest cast, but there really are only three actors in this and Sylvester McCoy doesn’t turn up until the end.

Dorsai is played by Miles Richardson, son of Ian Richardson. You would most likely know his father from House of Cards as Francis Urquhart or as Canon Black in Strange. Miles is a chip off the old block, every inch as talented and charismatic as his father. He has a very crisp clear Noel Coward-like accent in this and is utterly sympathetic throughout. He will go on to play the Timelord Braxiatel in the Big Finish audios. A fine actor.

Oh and John Ainsworth who goes back to Pisces and the AudioVisuals provides the voice of the computer. There’s one of those “Don’t call me madam” – “I’m sorry, madam” jokes in here, which is a bit of an unwelcome cliché joke here and sticks out like a sore thumb. Ainsworth is perfectly functional, there’s no lines which could make him stand out of course.

There’s a change of musician for this story, with Harvey Summers providing the music. It starts off very much like the first scene in Alien where they all wake up and goes on to rather lovely piano pieces played by Dorsai. Another great find by Bill Baggs.

The only niggle I have is that one scene in particular, the post production – this time not done by the magnificent Alistair Lock, but by Nicholas Briggs – he goes overboard on the stereo mix. There’s that awkwardness you get where you feel slightly dizzy because the mixer is panning from left to right and back again like crazy. Time to take the headphones off, unfortunately. Other than that it sounds like a convincing jungle planet.

+++++

Essentially what we have here is a character piece, two people trapped together. Very claustrophobic, examining just what exactly makes Ace tick. She claims to have friends but has made no attempt to see them in years. She is angry about her parents, distant from them too. She is alone and Dorsai concludes that she’s in love with the Professor. Ace slaps him down, a bit too close to the truth I think.

It is a talky piece discussing the nature of relationships. The piece where Ace rejects Dorsai, calling him creepy and ever-present while he just keeps saying how beautiful he finds her makes me wonder if these are criticisms that have ever been levelled at the author by a girl! We’ve all had crushes, right? They never work out.

It’s a good story and leads directly into the next one. I would recommend it but it’s not a high point. Definitely not a waste of your time!

Tim Saward interview – an Audio writer speaks

I try to research what happened to the writers/actors of the audios after it was made and usually the best I find is a few scant mentions on IMDB of minor roles in other productions. Fortunately I managed to locate a contact address for the writer of Prosperity Island, Tim Saward (no relation to Eric) and he kindly assented to an interview. Here we get an insight into writing for a new company in Doctor Who’s wilderness years.

+++++

The author with one of his stars, c. 1997

How did you come to writing?  Were you one of those children who always had a notepad full of stories?

How did you hear that Bill Baggs wanted stories and were you surprised to find out how professional they were?

I wrote quite a bit as a child and teen, and was always very keen to study drama at college, which I eventually did. I was a very keen Doctor Who fan, and I became aware of Bill’s stuff through reading reviews in DWM as a sixth-former. The Airzone Solution was the first video of his I bought, I think. Obviously I was impressed with the quality and I worked my way through the Stranger series. I was sending my acting/writing CV to loads of people as soon as I left University in 1996 and he was the one who responded! He asked me, on spec, if I would try writing a screenplay for what was then the early stages of his Auton video series. I wrote him a couple of scripts. One of them almost became Auton 2, but Nick [Briggs] did it in the end.

I wasn’t really familiar with AudioVisuals so much. I mainly knew (and know) Bill through his video work.

Did you write any Doctor Who related pieces before that?

Not really. I just never quite had a strong enough reason to, despite being a fan, and despite being quite determined that one day I would write for the show.

Were you a ‘fan’ or would you have written a story that wasn’t sci-fi just as happily?

Definitely a fan, but I always felt a little bit distant from fandom. It wasn’t so much a social thing for me. I was, and to an extent still am interested in a wide range of different kinds of stories. After I finished my three BBV scripts I did become interested in doing something more “non-genre” with more emotional kick. I have since written stuff which have no sci-fi elements, although there’s usually an element of geek.

What did you think of the finished product?  I was very pleased to hear Peter Miles’s voice; was he what you envisaged for the part of Projoy?

Peter was great and did everything with such gusto. As you know, the script was basically a reversioning of The Tempest, so I wrote it with images of Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books in my head and imagined Gielgud saying all of Projoy’s lines. But Peter was better!

After I finished the production, I wrote a long, boring letter to a director friend which was mainly a list of things I thought was wrong with it. I remember feeling very down on it, actually (which nonetheless didn’t stop me being disappointed when it got a dismissive review in DWM!). I wrote it in about two weeks because Bill liked short deadlines, which in retrospect gave no time at all to polish. It was all just how it came out at the first attempt.

It was definitely too long (Alistair Lock did quite a lot of trimming as he did the edit so it was even longer to begin with), and didn’t move much; Bill gave me that as feedback. It also treads this rather risky line of sounding cod-Shakespearean or, you know, pompous sometimes, but there’s a couple of nice gags and ideas. It was all just very rambling. The one advantage of its slow pace, however, is there are moments of atmosphere and there was a lot of room for my own voice and personality to come through, which is something you don’t get much of in plottier pieces.

The piece was definitely not many people’s cup of tea, and has a lot of problems, but it was “truer” to me and the kind of writing I enjoyed doing than the two subsequent pieces I did for Bill, which became more generic and actually I enjoyed writing them less.

You played Gabriel as well as writing it. Was it odd acting your own words?

It was odd, and I think the wrong decision. I wish someone had been there to stop me! I was just out of University, this socially awkward person with a lot of uncertainty about who I was and whether I was any good. I was completely overawed as well to be working alongside “proper actors”, especially Sylvester, and I think I was very inhibited and awkward in the studio as a result, and also hadn’t had enough time in my life at that stage to find out whether I sounded how I thought I did. I lost a lot of confidence in my acting when I heard it back, actually, and didn’t feel much like trying it again.

I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with your acting!  Gabriel is a great part and I made a point of paying attention to his portrayal. I like the submerged anger when he turns to Calida and says “You killed my master”. I recently heard a Big Finish author interviewed who also acts in some stories. He was quite down on his own acting. Maybe it’s a writer’s insecurity?  After all, don’t they say that writers are frustrated actors?

Well, in many ways I’m a frustrated writer, but thanks! I think that I was quite unselfconscious as a kid and teen when performing, and felt able to emote more, but in a way I later recognised as contrived and theatrical. At this time in my life, probably in reaction to that and to having been recently trained (which encourages you to doubt your prior assumptions), I was pulling back and was attracted to being very restrained and dignified – possibly to the extent of not “putting it over”. At University I was tending to get cast in deadpan-Radio-4-style-middle-aged-man sorts of parts, and I’d got a bit self-conscious about doing anything more risky at that stage. Acting is all about range and willingness to take a risk. I’m quite risk-averse!

Gabriel makes a tinkling/whooshing sound when he suddenly appears. Was this meant to indicate him materialising in a place or was he moving at incredible speeds?

He was meant to be sort of “electronically magic”. That noise was meant to be him materialising, yes, and in an early scene he’s disguised as the ship’s Captain.

In the beginning, it’s hinted that Gabriel made Stephen and Ace begin to behave sexually towards each other. Does Gabriel have psychokinetic powers too?  And if so, how did this occur?  Gabriel is an android, right?  Or is it just artistic licence and I shouldn’t be thinking too deeply?!

I can’t remember, to be honest. I think this was a reference to the “while you here do snoring lie” bit of the source material, but I don’t remember that I had a strong internal logic for it! I might have imagined it as a Rassilon-esque/Death Zone defence mechanism that prevented anyone exploring the island too carefully.

What were Sylvester and Sophie like to work with?

Sylv was very nice about the script. He said it was a good one. He worked so hard that first day and he hated long speeches, especially with technobabble, and of course I gave him tons even tho I’d been warned! I liked him a lot. We let him have lots of retakes, cos, hey, he’s the Doctor. I was too shy to interact with him much and didn’t direct him at all.

Sophie was superb. Completely professional. I regretted not doing more with Ace for this because she had experience and could put complete commitment into all those “What’s that, Professor?” lines without ever showing any boredom with that. I think understandably she enjoyed the next two rather more cos she had some character work to do with Ace, but she never showed it.

The most memorable scene for me was Antoinette talking about the culling of the telekinetic babies. Did you get a hard time for saying the unspeakable?

Oddly, no. There were also things like explicit references to menstruation and stuff that you didn’t (at the time) associate strongly with Doctor Who. But then we had had quite a few years of the New Adventures by that time, so there wasn’t much of a sense of taboo there, and Bill had never been one to avoid adult topics or horrific elements.

Were any of the character names based on anyone?

At the time I worked as the Education Officer in a Central London museum and wrote out the name labels each day for the kids in the workshop. One kid of about 6 was called Projoy and I really liked the name, which I asked the parents about. Apparently a Hindu name, although I’ve never heard since of anyone else who bears it. It was a good fit as a pseudonym for Prospero. I later adopted it myself as an online moniker and still use it on some sites.

The other names are all riffs on the Shakespearean character names, essentially, and mainly chosen from my big book of international names. Calida, who is a female(ish!) Caliban, is a Spanish name and so on. Milo is a male version of Miranda from the play and Gabriel is Ariel of course. Antoinette is Antonio and Stephen Stephano.

Calida has quite a deep voice (treated electronically). Is this just to disguise that it’s played by Clare MacMillan who also played Acting Director Gomera or was there another meaning? I wondered at first if she was a hermaphrodite or something!  Was she the last surviving prisoner or did she have a more mystical reason for being on the island?

I wasn’t there for the edit, so this was Alistair Lock’s call. I think I asked for this sort of effect to be applied (not sure) but on hearing it I felt he’d deepened it a touch too far and it didn’t sound recognisably female any more. On the other hand, it didn’t have a major effect on the story, so I don’t think I said so as most of the work was done at that stage and he was already massively over a reasonable amount of time spent on it!
Again, I can’t remember whether, like Caliban, she was a native of the island prior to its use as a prison. There’s a whole back-story with Caliban about Sycorax and I probably had something similar in mind, but cut for time.

Calida says she will strike down Projoy but Stephen must commit the killing blow. What was the reason for this?

Almost certainly the same reason as for Caliban. She knows Projoy knows how to outwit her so she has to manipulate someone else.

Projoy said he would give Gabriel his freedom when they left the island. Did he really intend to do this?

I doubt it. No broken staff for Projoy! I meant for him to be pretty much irredeemable, I think, unlike his Shakespearean counterpart.

Did Bill Baggs give any sort of briefing on what he wanted from a script or did you have carte blanche?

The only thing he was fairly insistent on was that it had to be 2 CDs long but involve Sylvester for just one recording day, which I think was mainly for business reasons rather than artistic (i.e. economies of scale). I don’t remember him having a vast amount to say about the content until afterwards, otherwise. I did send him the scripts prior to recording, and I must have given him some idea of the synopsis before that, but don’t remember if there was much time for rewrites even if he’d asked for them! He said that Mark Gatiss had written the two previous ones in a week, so the pressure was on, there.

What was the reaction from Bill Baggs from the finished product?  I imagine he’d have been very happy and asked for more?

He had some problems with it that he mentioned afterwards. First, the length and the fact I didn’t cut it down before the recording had lengthened both the recording days and the edit. He thought, rightly, that there was too low an action/duration ratio (and as I say, didn’t like my acting!). Alistair Lock had done a great job, though, and made it better than it otherwise would have been.

I remember talking to Jason Haigh-Ellery at a convention later that year about it and he sort of said similar things to Bill. I should probably have taken all that on board and then written a pitch to BF anyway to try and get closer to what they wanted, but at the time I didn’t really understand that that was possible. I just assumed I’d blown it with BF forever, so never bothered trying! I mean, possibly I had, but I never found out for sure.

The things that I thought were terribly clever, like the language and concepts and so on, really didn’t capture the attention of the producer types. It seemed to be much more about punchiness. I think English student listeners liked recognising the Shakespeare stuff. I got a couple of emails from people who appreciated it at that level.

As a writer, it’s very difficult to know which feedback to take seriously and which to ignore, and I’m not even sure that experience necessarily teaches you. I think basically you have to have a lot of faith in your own judgement and vision, and develop a thick skin, and above all you have to be able to deal with rejection by not just stopping.

What is good about Bill is that he was willing to let experiments happen, not necessarily in a guided way, but he was much less motivated by the desire to make money then by the desire to make something more credible than formulaic. That’s why a lot of the wilder ideas like In Memory Alone, Punchline and Faction Paradox were things that came out of BBV. It was a patchwork, and some stuff worked; some didn’t, but there was freedom to be different. It was a bit disconcerting to have such a light brief, but I think it was deliberate, and risk-taking.

We were social friends, me and Bill, up to 2007, when we finally lost touch. I found him complicated, and immensely hard to impress, but reassuring to be with because of this outward quiet confidence he was able to project.

In 1998-9, Bill did ask me to do the two subsequent ones and I did some other work for him, on the website and a bit on the production side.

Did you meet any of the other writers?

I didn’t really meet many of the other writers, except briefly Nick Briggs who was in Vital Signs and later directed and edited Zygons: Homeland, which I thought he did really well, and I phoned him to say so.

I hung around with some of the other BF and Virgin writers at conventions at that time. They were all very nice, but there was this very competitive, somewhat bitchy atmosphere which I just didn’t feel comfortable with at all. I figured it was useless to even try to acquire any status or join in, since I hadn’t done anything yet. I got on much better with people like Erin Tumilty, who did great filk songs, or Steve Johnson who worked for BBV for a while, and people I met at the BBV stall.

I was particularly in awe of Paul Cornell, who’d written Human Nature, which I thought of as basically the best DW ever written (I still do possibly). But he was very different in real life to the person I assumed had to be the author of such a book. For one thing, which slightly surprised me, he was a Christian, so far as I could make out. Why I wouldn’t have expected that, I’ve no idea, but I didn’t! I was a strange person then.

I would describe myself in those days as socially awkward maybe to the point of diagnosable Asperger syndrome, so striking up small talk with anyone impressive seemed overwhelmingly difficult, particularly when I really wanted to talk with great intensity and seriousness and be able to disagree and debate and other things I thought intellectuals did. I should have found a way to become an interviewer or something with a formal context. Actually, I did later for musical theatre stuff.

I liked Gary Gillatt a lot, which I’m not sure was mutual, but I found his personality very endearing.

The one DW writer I liked most of all ‘in person’ (although actually we only ever chatted online in the old Season 27 chatroom and possibly this is partly why) was Rob Shearman. Very generous of spirit and wore his talent lightly. I also genuinely liked all his stuff. Good chap.

You said the story was overlong and scenes had to be cut. Do these still exist anywhere?  Indeed, do you still have the script?  Were there any mementos you were able to keep?

I do have the full scripts. I used to have them on my website. I don’t think there were any other mementoes. I figured it would look too uncool to ask Sylv and Soph to sign a script or a CD!

Do you think you would ever write another one?  Big Finish are now the official audio stories of Doctor Who – would you submit a story to them?

You also wrote stories without a Doctor/companion; the Zygon and the Sontaran stories. How did that compare from a writing point of view?

Well, I wrote two more. One was Vital Signs which was a “Fred” story (basically an AudioVisual under another name) that John Ainsworth directed and the other was Zygons: Homeland which I put out under a pseudonym and Nick Briggs directed. (I later directed the Zygon and Sontaran ones you mention, but wasn’t the writer on them).

Vital Signs was another one that was a bit rambling and slow, but it had a clearer plot. I found it harder to write, and in particular I found it much less easy on that one to create personalities for the incidental characters, except Murphy and Kevin Kelly. Basically I like to write the overstated characters, but it can get a bit monotonous.

Homeland was much more fast-moving, and probably a more disciplined bit of storytelling, but again I felt a bit blocked with it and didn’t really find the angle that made me really want to write it, so it was a bit of a struggle.

I think I had this strong desire to write these very prolix and highfalutin things which were more like Prosperity, with the focus on the phraseology and sound, and also the politics and drier adult topics, but really that’s not what makes a DW story at all. It’s about plot and, nowadays, character too. So I basically was moving toward writing things that felt more like DW stories (and therefore more likely to please the target audience) but actually my heart wasn’t really in it and it wasn’t what I valued in writing. I hated the Zygon one so much by the end that I killed the entire cast in an explosion. It was the best bit of that script, but felt very bleak as it happens rather suddenly in a way not very well prepared for in the story up to that point.

There’s also a cheeky reference to Antoinette being hounded by the media before her death. Being recorded in 1998 this must surely be a reference to the then-topical death of Princess Diana?

I’m not at all sure of this, but my recollection it was commissioned around March 98, written April and recorded in early May. I might have that wrong. So, yes, Diana was a recent memory. You’ll also notice references to the Millennium celebrations. Oddly, I ended up working at the Millennium Dome in 1999, which was one of the main reasons I lost the spare time to write for a year.

Vital Signs, incidentally, was set in a hidebound museum with a new-broom boss. My next job was at the British Library. I’ve not yet visited Colombia or become an activist, though, as per Homeland.

Do you still write?  What interests you now?

I stopped for a while after BBV and did other things with my life, pursued my career and so on, but then later I got involved in amateur drama and then couldn’t resist writing a musical pantomime thing using projected, animated scenery (this was back in 2003 before everyone was doing it!). I wrote the score for it and actually was quite pleased with it.

We did a couple of those then I decided to go do an MA in musical theatre and for that I wrote half of a show about furries, the people who role-play anthropomorphic animals online. That was the way into writing about emotions for me without dropping that musicality of speech and dialogue. I quite like that feel of something that looks at real things in an artificial way.

I also co-wrote part of a musical about a Muslim girl and her gay friend and she’s facing an assisted marriage, reluctantly. That was very interesting to explore and again to try to connect to what is a very alien situation to me.

As with Doctor Who, I enjoyed doing musicals, but in musicals there’s even less of a career path than for Doctor Who writers! And in both fields there’s not a very developed market for the very specific zone I really feel motivated to write in, which is stuff that always seems to be underlain by quite a bleak, low temperature sort of world-view. When I read Lois Lowry for the first time, that was really a revelation, because she’s completely on that wavelength, it seems to me, but writing for young people.

The pantos were an exception, of course, but they were all pastiche and full of joy. But that’s me being insincere.

I’m taking another break now while I run a local theatre, which is my job since last year. I will probably go back, but I am not sure when. I think it will be to audio drama when I do because I feel like I know more about what I’m doing with that, much more than with theatre and video.

I doubt I’ll try again to write professionally because you just have to be prepared to twist and turn and have a million ideas and write things because you think other people will like them, or because there’s a market for them, rather than you like them yourself. I can’t twist and turn to quite the extent required if I’m also to take it seriously. Some people can confidently go off into assuming they know how Victorian characters will think and feel. I lost the confidence to imagine I could make that leap quite a while ago. I could possibly have tried to be a TV writer and done Doctors or similar melodramas, but I don’t think I’d have lasted long. My self-respect wouldn’t have lasted, anyway, and that would have removed my motivation! The moment I step outside of being completely invested in it and I have to be objective about it it quickly turns into an exercise and I start to reach for cliché when I should be being original. Good professional writers I think can blend all that stuff together more naturally than I’m able to.

What I do do sometimes, though, is write songs at speed for these musical-in-a-week projects that are done with kids in the summer. Those are great. There’s a short deadline, some people waiting to learn it, and it doesn’t carry the heavy burden of needing to be cogent or artistically valid, and it won’t be reviewed or scrutinised very carefully by anyone (definitely not the case with DW material!). They just have to be good pastiches that aren’t terribly felt. That is really fun, and it’s a chance to express the happy side that I tend to suppress in my writing for adults.

I find nowadays I’m much more interested in fact than fiction. I read very few novels now; the world as it is is a more interesting, deep and satisfyingly consistent thing than the superficial worlds of your average genre novel or drama. Also, I have over the years become more and more sceptical about the narratives that humans spin. They are often not a lot to do with the underlying facts. It’s hard to feel confident about spinning a narrative when you feel there’s something fundamentally inauthentic, perhaps even the tiniest bit unethical, about doing so.

I still watch DW on TV, though and I think it’s now been taken so far beyond its previous ambitions by Steven Moffat. He’s brilliant and I love almost everything he’s written for the DW world. Self-consciously clever, which I like, but blended so well with stuff you can connect to emotionally and in terms of ideas.

Tim Saward, thank you very much!

Tim Saward is a presenter on the MusicalTalk podcast which you can find here. He is also on Twitter if you want to follow his latest endeavours. I’d like to thank him for his invaluable assistance with this interview and great patience with my many follow-up enquiries!

Next time: In an “Ace Special”, Sophie Aldred is blinded and alone with a possibly-insane android in The Left Hand of Darkness.

The Massacre (with added Ian and Barbara)

Back in 1965 the TARDIS landed on Wimbledon Common. This was the final shot of the serial, in which Dodo runs into the TARDIS. The camera would then have alighted on two passers-by, shocked to see a familiar Police Box dematerialising.

Sadly it was never filmed, but here’s the authentic camera scripts for what would have happened.

from a 1965 shooting script you can see the Ian & Barbara cameo, as planned.

Prosperity Island (9/10)

CD, May 1998, BBV Audios

Starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred

Written by Tim Saward. Music by Alistair Lock.

Non-canonical, but presumably between Island of Lost Souls and The Left Hand of Darkness

 

“Babies started being born. And within the year all hell had broken loose. How can you give that kind of power to an infant and expect them to know the right way to use it? If you frustrated these children in any way they would just hit you across the room. And it was worse: babies are very curious. If they saw something they liked the look of they automatically grabbed it towards them. They got burned, scalded, crushed… lots of them died. One entire tower block was toppled when someone forgot to change a nappy. It was a disaster.”

“And nobody foresaw this?”

“Oh lots of people, myself included, but it was Men. They were so keen on the benefits they thought it was worth the risk. They thought they could put a tiny little warning on the packet and people would make their own safety arrangements.”

“So what did you do?”

“We had to have a cull. They collected all the children together and…”

“Killed them?!“

“What else could they do? The whole planet was collapsing, and worse: the economy.”

“So the brave new world turned into the slaughter of the innocents.”

“And Projoy was Herod.”

“And what happened to him? Could it be him that brought us here?”

“Oh I very much doubt it, Professor. Projoy’s dead. I had him shot.”

A new writer to Doctor Who here (I’m sorry, ‘The Time Travellers, one of whom is Ace‘) after the first two stories being by Mark Gatiss. Very little about Tim Saward to be found on the internet, but he has kindly agreed to an interview which I will be publishing after this review! Never let it be said I don’t bring you treats!

+++++

Disc One

On a deserted island stands a man talking to his 19yr-old son. They have been there sixteen years; the boy having only vague memories of other people in his worldview. The man speaks ominously about a change in their fortunes. A third man, Gabriel, is sent to complete the father’s mission.

Above the planet Millino a spaceship, the Miranda, is slowly descending, on its way to land with its consignment of tourists. In the final stages of landing the passengers are all confined to quarters. This gives two stowaways, The Doctor and Ace, a chance to roam around the deserted decks. The Doctor quickly realises the ship has changed course and is going to crash…

The man on the planet and Gabriel are clearly behind the imminent crash. The ship plummets into the sea. Only four people survive and they swim to land. Separated, the Doctor arrives on shore with Antoinette, the owner of the planet itself. Further along Ace makes the shore with a security guard called Stephen, who plans to make a lot of money from suing the company for the crash. Neither the Doctor nor Ace are certain that the other survived. All each has is hope.

The man and the boy, Milo, have been trapped on the Island, alone for sixteen years, since the boy was three years old. The man once ruled the planet until the incident which brought him to the desolate island. The cruel sea prevents them from leaving so the man brought the spaceship to him. Or more specifically, the woman he knew was on board: Antoinette.

Milo appears beside Ace, having used some sort of mental powers to make Stephen sleep. He wants to talk with her as he’s only ever seen one woman before, Calida. He communicates with Gabriel telling him he has found the woman they’ve been waiting for. Gabriel disbelieves Milo because he has found the woman himself.

The Doctor and Antoinette have found an abandoned building which still holds government records of the Millennium celebrations of sixteen years ago. The Doctor watches footage of Antoinette’s predecessor, a man called Projoy. Antoinette explains that he was also her husband. A brilliant scientist, excelling in neuroscience and genetics, Projoy achieved a monumental breakthrough.

He realised he could imbue psychokinetic powers into humans. Powers so strong that they could do wondrous things for the planet. However, he would need to work on embryos in order for it to work. The experiment began with his own child, Emilio, working on Antoinette’s unborn child in the womb. This worked and the ‘product’ was made available to the public. In the millennium year of 4000 the first babies were born, but the babies were incapable of restraint and were a doomed experiment which had to be halted, forcefully, for safety’s sake.

Antoinette decided that a cull had to be carried out. This was done and in the outcry, Projoy and Emilio were taken off for an ‘accident’ ordered by Antoinette. She seized power when he was declared dead.

Stephen meets Calida, a woman with a manly voice (a hermaphrodite?) who is filled with rage about Projoy. She mentions something that sounds like an enforced abortion. When she hears about the riches Stephen will accrue she says he can help her ruin Projoy with his funds.

Ace and Milo are brought before the man. (I’m sure you’ve already guessed he’s Projoy.) Projoy is furious that Ace is on his island. Ace and Projoy do not get on. Projoy’s bad mood makes him threaten Milo who runs off like a moody teenager (which he is). Gabriel is sent to retrieve Milo who opines that Projoy has merely made vague expressions of the “I’ll explain when you’re older” variety. Projoy will not explain things to him, not the outside world or even women. He’s angry that Projoy sent Calida away. Gabriel says that she had to go because their unborn child could not be allowed to survive because of the danger it would pose. (Presumably Projoy aborted the foetus himself?)

The Doctor is brought before Projoy. The Doctor questions why Projoy crashed the ship and brings up the tragedy of sixteen years ago. Projoy is irate, he has the Doctor and Ace taken to the cliff edge and they’re thrown off by Gabriel!

Disc Two

We begin with a flashback to the millennial celebrations of the year 4000. Projoy and his (actually rather bitchy) wife are having a disagreement about the psychokinetic baby products. He wants a tax incentive on the safety equipment. It is prohibitively expensive, the psychokinetic treatment is much more affordable. So of course people aren’t buying the safety equipment. Antoinette, who clearly has a thing with Projoy’s brother Bastien, is teasing Projoy with the secret his mother told her.

Back at the Company headquarters, three Sub-Directors of the company (one of which is unmistakeably Sophie Aldred in a posh voice doubling up as a minor character) meet to discuss the report of the crashed spaceship and the apparent death of Antoinette. It’s difficult for the Acting-Director Gomera to hide her pleasure. As the position of Director seems to have become hereditary they send for Bastien.

It’s not until thirteen minutes into the disc that we discover what’s happened to the Doctor and Ace. It’s glossed over, a MacGuffin. Milo saved them with his mental powers. Let’s move on. The Doctor fills him in on the circumstances of his birth. The Doctor requests Milo’s protection from Projoy; he intends that he and Ace will hitch themselves to Projoy’s escape plan. The Doctor modifies a homing golf ball he has in his pocket (cheat!) and sends it (with Milo’s help) to the mainland. The golf ball carries a message of their condition which will auto-transmit to the nearest audiovisual equipment.

Interrupting a conversation between Projoy and Antoinette, Gabriel reports on Milo’s absence but in a bit of clumsy exposition (Sorry Mr Saward!) Gabriel reveals himself to have been “built to thwart” Milo’s ambitions.

Acting-Director Gomera has become more Machiavellian, she intends to make Bastien her Acting Deputy Director until the public will accept him. At that point she would stand down and promote her successor (for a very generous pension). Bastien, it must be pointed out, is a smooth, slimy man.

Calida tells Stephen how she spent a night with Milo, who was only 16 at the time. She gave birth to Milo’s child but Projoy and Milo had it killed. The baby was thrown into the sea, the body was never found. She is filled with bitterness. Projoy must be killed and she wants Stephen to help her.

On Prosperity, a somewhat mad Projoy now has a hasty trial arranged, with the intention of clearing himself from blame and heaping it all squarely on the shoulders of Antoinette. He declares himself Judge, with Gabriel acting as both prosecuting and defence counsel. The jury consists of the Doctor, Milo and Ace. This is the finest scene in the story and is worth the price of the CD alone. The Doctor comes to the fore here as he quickly removes himself from the jury and takes over as the defence counsel, asking all the awkward questions of Projoy (who is now being questioned as a witness) which Projoy is honour-bound to answer.

It is now revealed that there were three million babies in the cull. The Doctor roots out that while Antoinette made all the horrible decisions – for reasons of greed; it was always about profit – Projoy was responsible as Director and also possessed the power of veto, which he did not apply. Why not? With Antoinette on the stand now, the Doctor’s questioning reveals that she knew Projoy was not the legitimate heir, nor indeed the father of Milo. Milo’s father is Bastien.

The Jury Foreman (Ace) finds Projoy, Antoinette and the whole government of the planet Guilty. Also pointing out that neither of them even care about Milo makes him run off, tearfully. Projoy, who genuinely seems to care about his son, chases after him… and runs straight into Calida and Stephen. Calida confronts Projoy, then kills him.

Gomera and Bastien are announcing the death of Antoinette at a press conference when suddenly they are called into a back room and shown the message from the Doctor’s golf ball. Bastien, is now quite enamoured of the idea of becoming Director of Millino. The unfortunate non-death of Antoinette does not meet with his approval. Later that night, he and Gomera secretly take a power boat out to Prosperity.

They pick up the survivors and Projoy’s body (Calida stays behind, she has her hollow victory and that is enough for her). On the way back to the mainland Bastien shoots Antoinette before being disarmed. With Milo and Gabriel in control to denounce Gomera and Bastien, the two time travellers nip forward five years to see how things worked out. Milo has inherited the Directorship and rules wisely, taught all he knows by Gabriel.

Happy with the outcome, the Doctor and Ace leave; destination: Brighton!

+++++

As much as I’ve enjoyed Sylvester McCoy in the preceding two stories, he brings a much more “Doctorish” performance here. He’s really first-rate. Landing on the shores of Prosperity his concern for Ace’s fate is audibly mixed with his certainty of her being capable of looking after herself. He’s gently pushing Antoinette along through a cave sequence where he hovers somewhere between confident and spooked before suddenly switching on to full ‘Doctor in charge’ mode at the trial scene. From that point on he’s unstoppable and impressive. Exactly what you’d expect him to be on TV!

Sophie Aldred is very recognisably the TV version of her character in a way that Big Finish just can’t quite mirror these days. There’s a subtle difference between TV Doctor & Ace and audio Doctor & Ace which is hard to define, but you know it when you hear it. This does feel like an untransmitted TV story to me. I doubt it would have been as good on TV though, it’s very dialogue-driven and a TV version would insist upon inserting a rogue monster somewhere on the island or the occasional bit of Nitro-9 pyrotechnics to jazz it up. Someone on my Twitter feed has professed a desire to put this on the stage and I could really see that working.

Of course my favourite voice on here is Peter Miles, majestic as Projoy. Projoy could so easily have been a typical (I’m deliberately not using the word ‘stereotypical’ here) bad guy, all one-dimensional and boring but Mr Miles really rounds out the character. You can tell this is a professional actor just by the energy he imbues into the words. It’s the same kind of energy Elisabeth Sladen had. Sarah Jane Smith on paper is really quite the generic companion but Ms Sladen makes her fully real and loved. Mr Miles here lifts the character up and makes it real. This is an angry man, sixteen years later he’s still vehemently holding a grudge against his former business colleague who’d got rid of him. Peter Miles is one of the iconic actors of Doctor Who with the most sinister tones. This is the man who was Nyder after all, as well as appearing magnificently in two Pertwee stories. We will hear his tones again in Whispers of Terror, and early Big Finish adventure, but he hasn’t – sadly – been heard of since reprising his role as Nyder in the I, Davros series.

Polly Pritchett is a wonderfully amoral anti-heroine here, acting as the Doctor’s companion for a short while, a wronged woman it seems. Until it becomes clear that she’s just as bad (if not worse) than Projoy. It was, after all, her orders which made the situation with the babies happen in the first place, due to her greed. Projoy, himself no angel, would have at least attempted to curb the dangers had she not been blackmailing him into silence. Unfortunately Polly Pritchett has but one credit on imdb, but you can see a photo of her here. I hope she’s still acting, she gives a confident businesswoman here.

Adam Bampton-Smith plays a perfect ‘virginal teenager’ here, despite him not being a virgin and at the latter end of the teenager scale. He sounds exactly like a teenage Hugh Dennis to me and that’s the face I see when I listen to this story. He’s very emotional and frustrated, just wanting to have the world explained to him, but forever held in abeyance by Projoy and Gabriel. Another perfectly cast actor. There’s a review of him in The Stage for 2008 and Google tells me he’s a writer/performer so it seems his career is still going strong.

The next most notable role is Mr Gabriel, an android created by Projoy to keep Milo distracted and in his place. This is performed by the author and although he’s very hard on himself in the part, I have to say I thought he was exactly right. He’s an emotional creation, but rather as you’d expect from a machine he does nothing after his master is killed, except curl his lip a little. No mad revenge of an over-loyal servant here. Tim Saward will be thoroughly explored in the next blog entry.

The problem with Big Finish audios is they have a real problem with accents. 95% of the actors are plummy middle-class tones with the occasional cockney or scouser as the token working-class character. Here, as ‘Stephen’ there’s Dan Riley providing a credible working class accent. What sounds to me like a Northumberland accent is a refreshing change from the Big Finish rut. I won’t go on a diatribe about class here, I merely point out a very large percentage of the population is working class and should be represented more in drama, particularly in Science Fiction where they’re usually portraying mindless doff-yer-cap or be brutal Guards. Although Stephen’s character is a Security Guard, it’s just his back-story job, it’s not what defines him throughout. He also comes very close to conquering Ace here and many of us will be jealous of that opportunity! Dan Riley’s name is too common a name to narrow him down on the internet.

The only other actor of note here is Clare MacMillan as Gomera/Calida. And… well… she’s not very good. As Gomera her accent feels forced, like she’s just walked out of a very bad performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. Calida is a better performance though Alistair Lock has added a vocal effect to distinguish the two parts. It doesn’t work, it makes her sound like a terrible hermaphrodite to me. A rare misfire from Alistair Lock.

Alistair Lock provides incredible sound work on this, otherwise. The scene on a power boat sounds like a power boat. The island shores sound exactly like island shores. The music is excellent, the treatment of the voices depending on whether they’re on a spaceship, in a cave, by a fountain… all spot on. Alistair Lock is the most thoughtful sound designer I’ve ever been aware of and really should be used by Big Finish more. If ever I made audio dramas he’d be the man I’d go to.

+++++

What we have here is, in the words of the author, a Doctor Who re-telling of The Tempest, the Shakespearean play. Although I must admit here I’ve never seen or read that play. So this story is a totally fresh one to my ears. There’s nothing wrong with riffing off other peoples’ stories. As Terrance Dicks quotes of Malcolm Hulke (or was it Robert Holmes?), good Doctor Who should have to be a good, original story, but “it doesn’t have to be your good original story!”. You only have to see the Tom Baker ‘gothic’ stories of 1976 which are heavily ‘borrowed’ from Frankenstein, Dracula etc to know this.

This was my favourite of the BBV audios and on listening to it again, it still is. The Doctor is The Doctor; Ace is Ace; there’s a small, contained cast and a deeply involving story of greed, infighting and revenge. Adult themes abound, the grim but necessary killing of babies is not one you’ll find outside of the bible. There’s a disconcerting strand on the fate of Milo and Calida’s baby which I’m still a bit vague on the details of, but the upshot is: Projoy had it cast into the ocean. (The ocean is thrown into turmoil for the moment after the child’s death but it’s not clear if it’s the distressed Milo’s psychokinesis or the baby’s.)

Also, Ace very nearly has sex under an outside influence. Fortunately this is just a ruse to keep her busy rather than anything nasty.

The weak point for me is that Calida and Stephen is very much a C-story here, being kept out of the action before performing a vengeful act right at the end. That, and Clare MacMillan’s strident voice as Gomera, perhaps belying a young actress trying to play a mature adult?

At two-and-a-half hours in length you’ll need to clear a space in your schedule for this but it’s really worthwhile. I would have loved to heard the deleted material, but with the time constraints of CDs at the time it couldn’t have been longer. Nowadays a story can be downloaded and duration is not a problem.

I really do recommend hearing this, it’s a superb example of Doctor Who as a stage play.

Next time: An interview with the story’s writer, Tim Saward. It’s exclusive to this blog and reveals a lot of the process of making a Doctor Who audio.